For those made glum by the campaign battle for the White House, a backward glance might afford a clearer view of the present. The 34th president was written off as a bit of an empty suit, but biographer Jim Newton has rendered a more nuanced portrait of the general and president in Eisenhower: The White House Years. Newton, author of an earlier book on Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, reassesses Eisenhower, depicting him as a leader who bucked Joe McCarthy, was a shrewd economic builder and refused to use the atomic bomb.

For another look at a very different White House, consider Watergate by Thomas Mallon, one of my favorite authors of historical novels. Mallon, who wrote Dewey Defeats Truman, gets to one of the most pressing questions in American history: Who erased those 18 1/2 minutes of tape?

This is an excerpt of a piece that ran in full in Printers Row Journal, delivered to Printers Row members with the Sunday Chicago Tribune and by digital edition via email.